My Mowglis

As "Mowgli" is a term I use to refer to my children regularly, I figured it was probably about time I defined it.

Mowgli (pronounced /mow-gli/):

The Official Definition: A fictional character who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in his fantasies, The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book.

My Definition: A young child who is in a state of wildness. This can be seen in untidy hair, mussed clothing, and/or bare, dirty feet. This state of being is usually seen in younsters at the end of the day or after playing outside.

Example 1:

Note the ill-fitting shirt, bad hair, and wild eyes

Example 2:

In this case, complete lack of clothing and unstyled hair a Mowgli makes

The term actually originated when my (much younger) cousin Tasha was little. When she'd run around my grandma's house playing, looking so wild and free, she reminded us of Mowgli from the Jungle Book. The term just stuck around after that, being used for my sisters' children and eventually mine too. So, if you ever hear me refer to a child as Mowgli or Mowgli-ish, now you know why.

Mom's Day Movie

I know, I know, I already posted once today (this has got to be like a record or something for me). However, my mom-in-law sent me this absolutely hilarious movie that is just oh-so-true (thanks Carole!). If any of you have brothers, you will totally relate. I can sooo wait until my kids are this age...actually can we just skip it all together :P ? Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkVFFsL6oaY

Edward Sneak Peek

This is for all you Twilight fans out there (you know who you are).

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.fullscreen&videoid=33429578

While the actor portraying Edward is good-looking, I don't think any mere mortal could live up to the fabulously gorgeous guy I have in my head...sigh.

Sometimes the storm ends with a tornado instead of a rainbow

This last past week around here was crazy busy. One of the things we had going on was a BBQ for some of Spencer's fellow graduate students and a couple of the professors he works closely with. It started out a bit slowly, as we were grilling over charcoal, and that always takes a while to heat up. However, both of the kids proved to be very entertaining for the group with Ezra dancing around to the beat of his own drum and Georgia crawling around bewitching everyone with her giggles and smiles. Right as first of the hamburgers (and veggie burgers for our resident Hindus) were finishing up cooking, a huge rainstorm decided to roll in off Boomer Lake. Within minutes, the place was soaked while we all huddled under our little pavilion with the faulty roof. Ezra didn't like getting wet (as he inevitably had before we could gather under the driest section), so he insisted I wrap him up in our blanket and hold him. Georgia, however, was more than happy sitting in her booster seat, eating green bean and Vienna sausages (making sure to offer one to anyone within sight). I kept on checking her damp arms to see if she was chilly, but she was absolutely content. I know I looked like a horrible mother as she sat there in the cold with Ezra snug as a bug in the blanket, but she honestly didn't seem to care. If anything, she thought the whole situation was humorous. After about a half hour of downpouring, the storm finally blew over. I took a towel from our car and used it to dry off a few picnic tables, and we attempted to resume our BBQ. That worked for about 15 minutes, until one of the other students got a call from a friend informing them that there was some rotation in a wall cloud out south-west of town, with rumor of another storm to follow, so we decided to call it a day. For those of you not familiar with Tornado Alley-speak, a wall cloud is a cloud that tornadoes come down from and rotation is when said cloud is...well...rotating. Basically there was a chance a tornado would be developing; add that to the fact that I wasn't feeling well (turns out I had the flu), I just wasn't up for any mad dashes to some unknown tornado shelter. We figured it'd be a good idea to just call it a day and went home. Sometimes, in good ol' Oklahoma, the rainstorm ends with a tornado instead of a rainbow.

On a lighter note, on Saturday, Aubrey, my best friend, graduated with her bachelors degree. To celebrate, we went out to lunch at Joseppi's with some of her family. The kids were, surprisingly, well-behaved and social. I was a little worried since our lunch landed smack-dab in the middle of when Georgia should've been going down for a nap, but she didn't seem to mind. Give her a lot of attention and a little food, and she's happy as a lark. After lunch, we went to Aubrey's parents house and had fabulous cheesecake and Oreo pie. I can't even tell you how excited I was to get to eat cheesecake after so long of being off dairy. Overall, it was a very fun afternoon.

Aubrey, Georgia, and me waiting for our food at Joseppi's

Ezra cheesin' it for the camera

Georgia and Ezra enjoying their spaghetti (yay! for safe restaurant foods)

Lime Baby

I've recently been informed I have a Lime Baby. It looks a lot bigger from here (they say having three pregnancies so close together will do that to you:P). Here's to finishing my first trimester! WooHoo!

The Name Tag

My sister gave me a couple of Name Tags to do, and I thought they were a fun idea, so sit back and enjoy!

My rock star name (first pet and current car):

Midnight Montero

My gangsta name (favorite candy bar and favorite cookie):

PayDay Short Bread

My detective name (favorite color and favorite animal):

Purple Puppy

My Star Wars name (first three letters of last name and first two letters of first name then the word "of" then a medication you are on):

Lifwh of Prenatal Vitamins

My superhero name (2nd favorite color and favorite drink with "The" in front):

The Red Smoothie

My Nascar name (first names of your grandfathers):

Monte Gilbert

My "lover" name (name of your favorite perfume/cologne and your favorite candy):

Euphoria Skittles

Witness-protection name (mother's and father's middle names):

Jo Reed

The other half of my tag is that I'm supposed to list my children's names and why we named them what we did.

Ezra Emil
I love, love, love Ezra's name. The first, the middle, all of it (ok...the last name I could do without;);). When we were deciding on a name, we knew that we wanted it to be a double "E" name, in honor of Spencer's great grandfather, Ernest Emil, (who was called E.E.) and his younger brother, Eric Emil. With the first letter and the middle decided, all we had to do was come up with a first name. I always hear all these stories of names that people just know their child was meant to have or just love it from the start, even before they were pregnant. That sooo isn't what happened with Ezra's name (or Georgia's for that matter). Honestly, we had an ever-changing list of names that we periodically added to and eliminated from and a couple of days before the baby was born, Ezra was added to The List. When he was born that was the one we loved the most off of The List. That being said, I don't love Ezra's name any less because it didn't jump off the page at me. It's such a strong, steady name shared by many great and spiritual men. I love the fact that Ezra will have not only E.E. and Eric to look up to, but also Ezra Taft Benson and the great biblical scribe and priest, Ezra. Plus he shares his name with a (little-known) book in the bible-how cool is that?

Georgia Marie

I have always loved the name Georgia. It was on the aforementioned list from pretty early on in my pregnancy. In fact, you could say we ended up using it because it was our Survivor (and it didn't even have to go live on an island). As all the other ever-rotating names around it got eliminated because we couldn't picture using them in real life, Georgia stuck around. It was just the one we loved the most. The fact that Georgia was my favorite state growing up (no, I've never lived there or even been there, but it always seemed so southern belle-ish) was just an added bonus. As for Georgia's middle name, Marie is my middle name and my Aunt Janet's middle name. While I wasn't so sure about naming her after me, in a sense, Spencer really liked it and it flowed well with her first name, plus I've always really loved my middle name, so Marie is what we went with. Overall, I really do love Georgia's name. It's just so classic and delicate...kind of like her.

Baby #3

We have yet to decide on a name for this baby and probably won't until we're in the hospital. When I was pregnant with Ezra, the fact that we didn't know the name as soon as we knew the baby's gender used to really bother me, but I've come to love the flexibility that comes with indecision. I know there are lots of baby name lovers out there, so I'd love any suggestions ya'll want to give me. Despite what it might appear from our haphazard naming methods, I really do love to discuss names in depth (for further proof, feel free to visit my Baby Names post) and would greatly appreciate any names you want to throw my way. So go ahead, bust out your baby name books and go crazy!

Thanks for making it this far. I had a really fun time with this post and I'd love to hear all about your names-the real and made-up ones. Feel free to accept my Name Tag if you want to. Have a fabulous day!

Tidbits of Life

It's hard to believe how fast time has flown since my last post. I've gotten to be such a loser about writing! As that has been the case, here a few tidbits to fill you in on what's been happening around here:

Ezra now sings The Beatles's "Hello Goodbye" (although just the chorus).

Georgia now dances to the aforementioned song. You should see her-she stands up against something and just bobs and bounces. In fact, now that I mention it, I might just have to take a video of Ezra singing and Georgia bouncing.

Georgia has been weaned and is soley on table foods. I was nervous to make the transistion at first since she is so small, but my milk was drying up and I really did need to be eating a more of a complete diet for the baby. Despite all my worries, Georgia has done fabulously. She gobbles up all kinds of food, although she does have definite likes and dislikes. She'll let you know when something doesn't strike her fancy pretty dang fast.

Ezra is absolutely in love with trains, Thomas the Tank Engine especially. Those of you at Ruby's Inn might remember the Missing Thomas Disaster of '08 (Thomas was later found with a bunch of toys belonging to another cousin. They had gotten thrown in there by mistake). Ezra insists on taking Thomas and the Sodor Fuel car everywhere he goes and often sleeps with them (heaven knows how two wooden trains can possibly be comfortable to sleep on). He takes his trains and track-building very seriously, frequently telling Georgia to leave them alone because they are his "very special trains".

*A quick THANK YOU! to Auntie Libby and her boys Josiah, Gavin, and Gunner for loaning Ezra their train set until we can aquire one of our own.*


Ezra seems to be in another "fasting" phase. He's always picky, but when he gets like this, we're lucky to get him to eat anything. His entire diet for the day has consisted of a handful of raisens, four soda crackers, three bites of an apple, a sucker (he discovered it on top of the fridge left over from Valentine's Day...lovely), and half a cup of applesauce. The sad thing is that it's a lot considering the rest of this week.

While Georgia doesn't yet walk, she does cruise along the furniture and has even started to push some of Ezra's toy boxes around and walk behind them. I'm beginning to think it won't be long now! It might be not be a good thing, necessarily, but it's still always exciting when the little ones learn to walk.

Well, folks, that's about all I have time for today. Spencer's giving a presentation at an ASHRAE conference tonight (Yay! for Spencer), so I've got to get stuff ready for the babysitter. Thanks for sticking through the long breaks between these last few posts, I hope to get back into more of regular posting schedule after this. Have a fabulous day!